The post-independence relationship of India and Pakistan has been characterised by ongoing tensions, mutual suspicions and a sequence of short wars involving the sovereign state successors to the British Raj𖤓. At the forefront of this regional disharmony has been Jammu and Kashmir (J & K), the greater part of the area controversially awarded to Hindu-dominated India in the 1947 Partition of the Subcontinent but populated by a Muslim majority.
Kargil: 8,780 ft above sea level
Advancing by stealth across the disputed boundary: The most recent of these short-lived, episodic wars occurred in 1999 in Kargil in the remote union territory of Ladakh. Faced with the frustration of India holding the dominant hand in the disputed Kashmir region and unwilling to consider any alterations the Line of Control (LoC)𖦹, Pakistan opted for a bold if brash strategy. “Infiltrators” from the Pakistan side, crossed the LoC and took hold of Indian positions in the inhospitable glaciated terrain of Kargil, initially undetected by the Indian command. Alerted to the incursion, the Indian military unleashed a counteroffensive and over two months of fighting drove the Pakistanis back onto their side. Islamabad first sought to explain the military incursion as the work solely of Mujahideen “freedom fighters”, but this deception was quickly exposed with Pakistan paramilitary involvement discovered to be central to the military operation❖.
Kargil and Kashmir (image: insightsonindia.com)
Islamabad’s motives for the act of aggression taken by what Indian media termed “rogue army” elements, seem to have been severalfold. The strategic plan was to cut India’s communication lines in Kashmir between Srinagar and Leh. Pakistan was probably also motivated by a desire to regain lost honour for earlier military reversals at India’s hands, especially the Indian army’s 1984 seizure of Siachen Glacier and the crushing defeat in the 1971 war (Liberation of East Pakistan). Islamabad hoped that the proactive move might also prove a fillip for the flagging Pakistani insurgency movement in Kashmir [RAGHAVAN, SRINATH. Review of Dissecting the Kargil Conflict, by Peter Lavoy. Economic and Political Weekly 45, no. 44/45 (2010): 29–31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20787524]. Essentially, Pakistan’s intent was to create a crisis in Kashmir with the aim of forcing New Delhi to sit down to negotiations and finally settle the Kashmir imbroglio.
Pakistani soldiers in snow-capped Kargil (source: au.pinterest.com)
Strategic miscalculation:The upshot for Islamabad was pretty disastrous, the status quo remained in New Delhi’s favour, strategically Pakistan failed to hold its advance position into enemy territory and found itself diplomatically isolated by its action…most of the international powers, including its ally China, criticised Pakistan for what some observers saw as its “reckless”, “adventurist”, “risk–adverse” behaviour. [Tellis, Ashley J., et al. “THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE KARGIL CRISIS.” Limited Conflicts Under the Nuclear Umbrella: Indian and Pakistani Lessons from the Kargil Crisis, 1st ed., RAND Corporation, 2001, pp. 5–28. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7249/mr1450usca.8. Accessed 15 Nov. 2024]. This generally-held perception of Pakistan resorting to intemperate action allowed India to turn the information war in the Kargil conflict into a diplomatic victory for New Delhi.
Pakistan, First Islamic state to join the nuclear club (source: Topcity–1)
Spectre of the nuclear option: While the brief Kargil War was limited to a low intensity conflict, the potential was there for it to escalate into an expanded conventional war, and most alarmingly, into a nuclear confrontation. The possibility of this happening existed because a year prior to Kargil, in 1998, Pakistan joined India as the second South Asian state to attain nuclear weapon capacity. This became more acutely critical to the international community during the war when, in response to India’s massive build-up of military arms in Kargil-Dras sector, Pakistan foreign secretary Ahmed hinted that the country might resort to using nuclear weapons. Islamabad may have only produced the nuclear card as a deterrent to an Indian counter-thrust, nonetheless Pakistan Prime Minister Sharif was clearly engaging in nuclear brinkmanship – by moving nuclear warheads towards the border (for which he was roundly rebuked by US President Clinton) [‘India and Pakistan Fought in 1999. Why Didn’t It Go Nuclear?’, Sébastien Roblin, The National Interest, 14-June-2021, www.nationalinterest.org].
Indian soldiers celebrate victory in the Kargil War (photo: business–standard.com)
No let-up for the troubled Kashmiris: Although there hasn’t been any new wars in Jammu & Kashmir since 1999, tensions and conflicts have continued virtually unabated since then. In 2019 there were troop clashes across the de facto border following Pakistani Islamist terrorist attacks. With Prime Minister Modi’s BJP Hindu nationalist regime committed to integrating J & K, an administrative rearrangement of the territory saw it lose its autonomy and be downgraded in status. Civil and political rights of the majority Muslim population have been eroded and Indian security forces are frequently accused of human rights violations. Separatist and jihadist militants continue to wage a protracted insurgency against the authorities [‘Indian Kashmir’, Freedom in the World 2024, https://freedomhouse.org].
Heavy Indian army presence in Kashmir fuelling Pakistani resentment (photo: pakistanpolitico.com)
Postscript: Atlantique IncidentAfter fighting in Kargil ceased in July 1999 there was no easing of Indo–Pakistani tensions. Just one month later the Indian airforce shot down a Pakistan navy plane in the Rann of Kutch (border land between Pakistan’s Sindh province and Western India’s Kutch district), accused of violating the former’s air space. The matter dragged out with both sides blaming each other and a failed international court appeal, leading to a further deterioration in the ruptured relationship.
Rann of Kutch, site of Atlantique Incident (Sir Creek) location of a second long-running Ind–Pak border dispute
𖤓 1947–48, 1965, 1971, 1999
𖦹 the temporary border separating the two countries in the Himalayas region
❖ in so doing it breached the Simla Agreement (1972) between the two neighbours
In an isolated, off-the-beaten track northern peninsula in the Northern Territory, all that’s left of an early 19th century British outpost are the remnants of several buildings and a few crumbling cemetery headstones. This was once the Victoria Settlement (aka “New Victoria”) at Port Essington, founded in 1838 on the traditional lands of the Madjunbalmi clan.
⌂ Location of Cobourg Peninsula & Victoria Settlement (red arrow)
Britain’s motives for establishing an outpost on the northern coast of the continent were both military and commercial. A garrison guarding the northern approach to Australia would, it was hoped, be a deterrent to any colonial ambitions nurtured by Britain’s imperial rivals, France and Holland. Britain from the early 1820s on had an inkling of France’s intention to claim part of northern Australia (‘Victoria Settlement 1838–1849’, www.pastmasters.org.au)𝟙. British ambitions for the settlement, protected by an armed garrison, included the hope that it might develop into a trading hub along the lines of Singapore (‘Ruined Dreams of Victoria Settlement’, Julie Fison, 20-Sep-2022, www.juliefison.com). The British also hoped to benefit from the lucrative trade in trepang (sea cucumber), which had brought Makassan fishermen from the East Indies to Pt Essington for centuries. Unfortunately for them this remained unrealised as the Makassans continued to trade exclusively with the Dutch (‘The doomed attempt to claim Australia’s north for the British Empire’, Georgia Moodie, ABC News, Upd 03-Dec-2019, www.amp.abc.net).⌂ Part of town remains today (photo: ABC RN/Georgia Moodie)
The fledgling colony was beleaguered by many obstacles and setbacks. A cyclone in 1839 wreaked much havoc and destruction, precious stores were lost𝟚, the jetty was wrecked as well as damage to buildings and moored ships. The water supply was inadequate, proving a vexing problem in the dry season (Garig Gunak Barlu National Park, ‘Victoria Settlement’, http://nt.gov.au).⌂ Explorer Ludwig Leichhardt visited remote Victoria Settlement during his 1844-45 northern expedition
Malaria was a regular companion of the colony’s inhabitants, eventually claiming the lives of nearly a quarter of the residents. Allied with outbreaks of dysentery, influenza and scurvy, the illnesses inflicting the garrison often confined much needed labour to the hospital’s sick bay. The lack of skilled labour and poor quality resources resulted in a lot of substandard dwellings. The exacting climate, the harsh conditions of Port Essington, made the colony an unattractive prospect to new settlers the government had hoped to lure from the south or from the “old country”. Visiting scientist Thomas Huxley’s description of Port Essington as “most wretched, the climate the most unhealthy, the human beings the most uncomfortable and houses in a condition most decayed and rotten” didn’t help the cause.⌂ Sketch of Port Essington by Commandant John McArthur
The royal marine corps, led by Commandant John McArthur, and most unsuitably attired (heavy wool uniforms) for the region’s conditions, struggled to adapt to life the tropics. A sign of the residents’ despair at their situation can be gleaned from McArthur’s habit of signing all his letters “John McArthur, World’s End”. The settlement struggled on for eleven years, the British authorities having given up on its prospects as a viable colony, maintained it for several years only as a strategic outpost to discourage the possible plans of other European colonial powers in that part of the continent (Moodie). Finally, Victoria Settlement’s failure was evident and the outpost was abandoned in 1849 and the marines returned to Sydney.⌂ History information board at site (photo: John Baas)
Footnote: Indigenous–White interactions
In stark contrast to the tragic and violent colonial interactions characterised by Aboriginals and Europeans elsewhere in the Great Southern Land, a refreshingly good relationship formed between the settlers and the local clans𝟛 – the White settlers in time came to develop a respect for the area’s Blacks and their unique culture (Moodie). And without the crucial local knowledge and advice provided by the Madjunbalmi people at the onset of the settlement, it would likely have folded within a couple of years.⌂ Map of 1820s–1830s historic settlements (source: Northern Territory Library)
𝟙 there had been two prior, unsuccessful British attempts at colony made at nearby Raffles Bay and Melville Island in the 1820s
𝟚 stores—sourced from various locations, Sydney, Timor, Java, India (Darwin wasn’t established until 1869)—were often in short supply, especially medical supplies
𝟛 the small White population was a factor in the peaceful accord
Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” (GLF) in 1958—communist China’s bold venture to transform the nation’s economy from agrarian to industrial—necessitated some drastic social engineering, and more than a little tinkering with nature. The “Paramount Leader”, repudiating the advice of state economists, consistently advocated the efficacy of population growth for China (Ren Duo, Liliang Da – “With Many People, Strength is Great”) …he stated that “even if China’s population multiplies many times, she is fully capable of finding a solution, the solution is production” (‘The Bankruptcy of the Idealist Conception of History’, (1949)). One strategy of Mao’s for protecting the imperative of national productivity and boosting output involved an extreme “solution” in itself.
Four Evils Campaign poster (source: chineseposters.net)
Pest controllers: As a plank of the GLF Mao spearheaded the “Four Evils Campaign”, four “pests” of the natural world were targeted for elimination – rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows…the first three especially concentrated in large numbers certainly could pose a threat to public health and hygiene, but why sparrows? Mao singled out the sparrow because it consumed the grain seed and rice from agricultural fields. What followed was a government propaganda campaign exhorting the people to fulfil their patriotic duty and zealously hunt down these proscribed “enemies of the state”. The regime enlisted the civilian population in a military-like operation, a coordinated mass mobilisation, dedicated to this singular task. The mass participation event included the very young, armies of children aged five and older were despatched from their homes armed with slingshot and stones, to formicate all over the countryside and wipe out vast numbers of sparrows often with frightening effectiveness.
“Patriotic duty” of young Chinese (source: chineseposters.net)
Mao v Nature: Mao’s war on passerine birds was part of a wider war on nature. Mao encapsulated the objective for China in one of his oft-repeated slogans: Ren Ding Sheng Tian (“Man must conquer nature”). Mao’s modernist conception of the world saw humans as fundamentally distinct and separate from nature, so in order to fashion the world’s most populous republic into the socialist utopia that he envisioned, nature, this external thing, had to be harnessed and defeated (Zhansheng ziran). The result was a drastic reshaping of China’s physical landscape, the over-extraction of resources, intensive farming schemes, massive deforestation, riverine pollution, over-hunting and over-fishing [Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War against Nature (2001)]
Eurasian Tree Sparrow: top of Mao’s nature hit-list
A monstrous ecological imbalance and a species endangered: The nationally coordinated campaign against the four pests proceeded with phenomenal speed and ruthless efficiency. By early 1960 an estimated one billion sparrows had been destroyed🄰, nearly wiping out the species altogether in China…a fateful consequence that was to prove catastrophic for the country’s food production. The authorities had not heeded the expert advice from Chinese scientists🄱 that sparrows fulfilled a vital function in feeding off not just crops but off insects including locusts. With the removal of this natural predator, locusts in plague quantities were free to ravage the nation’s fields of grain and rice, and ravage they did, in Nanjiang 60% of the produce fields were ruined [‘Mao and the Sparrows: A Communist State’s War Against Nature’, Agata Kasprolewicz, Przekroj, 22-Mar-2019, www.przekroj.org] .
The Great (man-made) Famine, 1959–1961: The resulting Great Famine in the PRC caused up to 30 million deaths and an estimated similar figure or more in lost or postponed births, making it the worstfamine in human history judged by population loss [‘Berkeley study: Historic famineleavesmultiplegenerationsvulnerable to infectiousdisease’, Berkeley Public Health, www.publichealth.berkeley.edu]. The plunge in agricultural output linked to the sparrow decimation project was further exacerbated by other factors such as Peking’s procurements policy, increase in grain exports from 1957 (redirecting grain away from domestic consumption which otherwise could have allowed millions of Chinese to survive the famine); the priority on industrialisation diverting huge numbers of agriculturalworkers into industrial sectors adversely affected the food scarcity crisis.
Fujian province propaganda poster, 1960 (image: US National Library of Medicine)
Postscript: Reprising the eradication campaign In 1960 the Chinese government upon realising the folly of its sparrow offensive, overturned its proscription of the birds, declaring war on bed bugs in their place. The disastrous sparrow mega-kill episode however didn’t bury the Four Evils campaign forever. The Chinese government in 1998 launched a new version of the movement, posters were seen in Beijing and Chongqing urging citizens to kill the four pests…the first three were the usual suspects as in 1958, but this time cockroaches were substituted for sparrows. Unlike the original sparrow campaign the 1998 version was not successful [‘The Four Pests Campaign: Objectives, Execution, Failure, And Consequences, World Atlas, www.worldatlas.com].
🄰 along with 1.5 billion rats, over 220 million pounds of flies and over 24 million pounds of mosquitoes
🄱 there were doubters within the hierarchy of the Communist Party who had misgivings about the wisdom of the Paramount Leader’s policy, but most found it expedient to remain silent for fear of the personal consequences of incurring the wrath of Mao
Exegesis: Relegating the author In literary and artistic aesthetics the intentional fallacy occurs when readers or viewers use factors outside the text or visual work (such as biographical information) to evaluate its merits, rather than ignoring these “external” factors and relying solely on the textual or visual evidence of the novel, play, poem, painting, etc. to assess the work in question (what’s actually in the text and nothing outside). This key precept of the New Criticism school declares that a poem (or other work of art) does not belong to its author, it is (as stated by the term’s originators WK Wimsatt and MC Beardsley) “detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it”1⃞. Authorial intention is a non-consideration in the assessment of the work. The text or work has an objective status and its meaning belongs solely to the reading or viewing public. The reader’s task in literature, advocates of New Criticism assert, is to eschew subjective or personal aspects such as the lives and psychology of authors and literary history and focus entirely on close reading and explication of the text (A Glossary of Literary Terms (4th edition, 1981), edited by M.H. Abrams).
The intentional fallacy, elaborated in Wimsatt’s 1954 The Verbal Icon
The intentional fallacy doctrine has a corollary in the affective fallacy which adheres to the same principles. Wimsatt and Beardsley affirmed that evaluating a poem by its effects—especially its emotional effects—upon the reader, is an erroneous way of approaching the task. Giving rein to the emotions a work of art evokes in you, negates an appreciation of “the (work’s) inherent qualities and craftsmanship” that an objective analysis permits (Prince Kumar, ‘Understand Affective Fallacy from Example’, LitforIndia, 23-Dec-2023, www.litforindia.com).
(source: cornerstoneduluth.org)
Semantic autonomy, Intentionalism, Anti-intentionalism: The intentional and affective fallacies as prescriptive “rules” of hermeneutics held sway from the 1940s to the 1970s, however this is not to say that there was no pushback from scholarly dissenters. Proponents (primarily American) of what is called “Reader-response theory” reject the claims of New Criticism of this prescribed mode of interpreting and critiquing a work of literature. Some of these objected to the fallacy’s nothing outside the text rigidity for constricting exploration of all possibilities of a work’s meanings. Critic Norman Holland frames it in a psychoanalytical context, the reader, he affirms, will react to a literary text with the same psychological responses he or she brings to events in their daily lives, ie, “the immediate goal of interpretation is to fulfil (one’s) psychological needs and desires” (‘Psychological Reader-response Theory’, Nasrullah Mambrol, Literary Theory and Criticism (2016), www.literariness.org). Theorist ED Hirsch in his “Objective Interpretation” essay also took issue with the expositors of the intentional fallacy thesis, arguing that on the contrary authorial intent (intentionalism) was integral to a full understanding of the work…the only meaning that is permanent and valid is that of the author in question, the reader should confine him or herself to interpreting what the author is trying to say (E.D. Hirsch, Jr, Validity in Interpretation, 1967) .
𖠔 : 𖠔 : 𖠔 : 𖠔 : 𖠔
A quite different kind of fallacious argument is the argument from silence (Latin: argumentum ex silentio). This arises when a conclusion or inference is drawn based on an absence of statements in historical documents and source materials…the argument seeks not to challenge or rebut specific things an author includes in a book or document, but is critical of the author for something they should have said but didn’t! The most common instances of the argument from silence in practice relate to biblical debates and controversies, but a contemporary classic example of a non-theological, historical nature, one generating considerable heated discourse, concerns the 13th century merchant and explorer Marco Polo and the famous book of his travels in the East.
Medieval Venezia at the time of Marco Polo (source: Bodleian Library, Oxford)
Medieval world travelogue guru?: Known by various namesincluding Description of the World (Divisament du monde), Book of the Marvels of the World, Il libro di Marco Polo detto il Milione, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian, or simply The Travels of Marco Polo, the book is one of the most celebrated tomes in the annals of literature dealing with the experiences of travellers to distant and unknown lands. The story, told and retold in numerous languages over centuries, presents Marco and his father Niccolò and uncle Maffeo embarking on an epic road trip along the Silk Road to the court of the Great Khan in Khanbaliq (Beijing). The book recounts Marco’s travels in Cathay (North China) and Manji (South China), among other Eastern lands. The consensus among most historians is that Signor Polo, despite a tendency to exaggerate and embellish the tales of his travels2⃞, did nonetheless journey to China as he claimed in the book. The publication of Did Marco Polo Go to China? by Frances Wood in 1995 controversially swam against this tide. Wood infers serious doubts about Polo’s achievements, suggesting that despite his being away from his native Italy for the best part of a quarter-of-a-century, he never reached his intended destination China. According to Wood, he got only as far as Constantinople and the Black Sea where he accumulated all of his information on Chinese society and other Asian lands (his source material for the “Travels”) from picking the brains of visiting Persian merchants.
A page from the Polo travelogue
Doubting “Marco’s millions”: What made Wood so convinced that Marco Polo never visited China? Firstly, there is the book’s puzzling itinerary, it proceeds in a disjointed, incoherent fashion, is not uniformly chronological, has some odd detours and gets some geographical place names in China wrong. Then, while acknowledging The Travels of Marco Polo contains references to porcelain (from Fujian province), coal, rice-wine, paper currency and other items, Wood hones in on the fact that the Venetian traveller failed to mention certain other quintessentially Chinese things—namely the Great Wall of China, tea, chopsticks, cormorant fishing and the practice of foot-binding—in the pages ofhis “Travels’. Wood also picks up on Polo’s failure to learn Chinese during his sojourn in the Middle Kingdom. Allied to these omissions was the absence of Polo’s3⃞ name in any official Chinese document of the period, which Wood believed, further incriminated Marco as the perpetrator of a fraud.
A crumbling section of the not-so-great wall in north China built prior to Polo’s time (photo: John Man, The Great Wall)
Wood herself is perpetrating a pattern of reasoning which is problematic by recourse to an argument from silence. As Sven Bernecker and Duncan Pritchard in The Routledge Companion to Epistemology (2010) (ISBN0-415-96219-6Routledge pp. 64–65) note, “arguments from silence are, as a rule, quite weak; there are many examples where reasoning from silence would lead us astray.” Academic critics have been quick to pinpoint the shortcomings and misconceptions in Wood’s argument. There are, they counter, manifestly valid reasons why Polo would not refer to the Great Wall, for one, it was largely not there in the period of his residency in China! The impressive edifice of the Great Wall as we think of it was primarily a product of the Ming Dynasty (from 1368, three-quarters of a century after the Polos’ stay)…what there was of the not-so-Great Wall prior to that was a much more modest, unprepossessing sight (“a discontinuous series of derelict, pounded earth ramparts”) (‘F. Wood’s Did Marco Polo Go To China?’, A Critical Appraisal byI. de Rachewiltz, http://openresearch–repository.anu.edu.au). With the matter of the Chinese penchant for tea-drinking, perhaps Polo didn’t think the topic simply sufficiently noteworthy to rate a mention4⃞. The question of the omission of foot-binding, chopsticks and Polo’s linguistic ignorance of Chinese in the travelogue can all be accounted for. China and the royal court was under Mongol control (Yuan Dynasty) in Marco’s time, accordingly Polo moved in those circles, tending not to mix with the (Han) Chinese population. and so lacked the motivation (or opportunity) to learn Chinese. Likewise, he wouldn’t have encountered many upper class Chinese women in their homes, this was the strata of society that practiced female foot-binding, not the Mongols. Again, with chopsticks, not a utensil of choice for the Mongols who Polo tended to fraternise with (Morgan, D. O. (1996). Marco Polo in China-Or Not [Review of Did Marco Polo Go to China?, by F. Wood]. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 6(2), 221–225. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25183182). As for “the Travels’” silence on fishing with cormorants, the activity was not a widespread phenomena in China during the Yuan era, confined to the remoter areas of Sichuan Province (‘Cormorant Fishing in China’, Sally Guo, China Travel (Upd. 04-April-2021), www.chinatravel.com).
MP (source: caamadi.com/de/marco-polo-in-venice)
Filtered Marco Polo – Rustichello et al: And there’s another line of thought when considerating the book’s glaring omissions, inconsistencies and inaccuracies that Frances Wood doesn’t seem to have factored into her thesis…The Travels of Marco Polo, the published book we read today, is a different beast in form and content to the original article from the late 1290s. In fact the original manuscript which Polo dictated to his amanuensis, an imaginative romance writer Rustichello de Pisa —who had licence to inject his own theatrical flourishes and flavour into Marco’s original story—was lost early on, so “the Travels” have gone on an untraceable and interminable journey through “dozens of translations of translations, none of which are necessarily accurate” (‘The Travels of Marco Polo: The True Story of a 14th-Century Bestseller’, Anna Bressanin, BBC, 09-Jan-2024, www.bbc.com). Of the 54 extant manuscripts (out of around 150 distinct copies in all languages), no two copies are entirely alike with “improvements” and edits made by each copyist and translator. We should also remember that Marco was in prison, relying on his memory to recount a multitude of events and experiences, some of which stretched back over 20 years, hardly surprising then if readers have to contend with the recollections of a not entirely reliable narrator (‘Marco Polo’s book on China omits tea, chopsticks, bound feet’, Peter Neville-Hadley, South China Morning Post, 04-Oct-2020, www.amp.scmp.com).
The Marco Polo saga has spawned a long history of film and television versions with romantic adventure taking precedence over story accuracy
Heavily redacted archives: The issue of Polo’s claim to have been an official in Kublai Khan’s service—and in particular governor of Yangzhou—was seized on by Dr Wood who pointed out that Marco’s name does not appear in any historical official Chinese archives. Rather than being necessarily proof of Marco fabricating a presence in China as Wood assumes, other factors may explain the discrepancy…no other Italian merchants known to have visited medieval China are mentioned in any Chinese sources, even the Papal envoy to the Great Khan’s court, Giovanni de Marignolli, doesn’t rate a mention (‘Marco Polo was not a swindler. He really did go to China’, Science News, 16-Apr-2012, www.sciencedaily.com). Another factor germane to this is the fact that the Ming (Han) Dynasty that succeeded the Mongol-dominated Yuan Dynasty initiated the practice of erasing the records of earlier non-Han officials (Morgan).
(source: LibriVox)
One particularly vocal critic of Did Marco Polo Go To China?, Sinologist Hans Ulrich Vogel from the University of Tübingen, produced a research paper demonstrating that Marco’s descriptions of currency, salt production and revenues from the salt monopoly in China were of a standard of accuracy and uniqueness of detail5⃞, that produces a very high level of proof that Polo had to have been in China, close to the wheels of power, to be privy to such comprehensive knowledge (www.sciencedaily.com).
Chinese salt production (source: Wellcome Images)
The “logical fallacy of weak induction”: Frances Wood’s iconoclastic book was certainly an attention-grabber, both for medieval scholars and Sinologists and for the general public, causing a furore upon its publication in 1995 and spawning several TV documentaries. China and the world of the Great Khan is a central tenet of the Marco Polo story, making it unthinkable to most scholars, almost a sacrilege, to suggest that the legendary Venetian traveller never set foot in the Middle Kingdom! The weight of the counter-argument unleashed against Wood’s thesis throws a spotlight on the hazards of trying to “treat the absence of evidence as evidence itself”, as Steven Lewis summarises the fallacious nature of the argument from silence (‘The Argument from Silence”, Steven Lewis, SES, www.ses.edu).
(image: silk–road.com)
Frances Wood, Did Marco Polo go to China? (1995, Secker & Warburg, London)
1⃞ Wimsatt and Beardsley’s 1946 ‘Intentional Fallacy’ essay to some extent has its antecedents in the earlier debate between CS Lewis and EMW Tillyard, published as The Personal Heresy: A Controversy (1939), in which Lewis argued that an author’s own personality and biography has negligible to zero impact on the literary text, while Tillyard enunciated the contrary position: that an author’s own imagination and story can have an indelible influence on a work of literature
2⃞ and there had been doubters even in Marco’s time and later about some of his more wilder and fantastic claims, earning him the epithet Il Milione or “the Millions”) (aka “Marchus Paulo Millioni”). Wood’s particular slant on Polo’s book follows the lead of earlier German Mongolists
3⃞ who had claimed to have been an emissary in the emperor’s service
4⃞ Wood herself concedes that Rustichello may have edited out references to tea on the grounds of it being “of no interest to the general public”
⌂ Explorer Ludwig Leichhardt visited remote Victoria Settlement during his 1844-45 northern expedition 
⌂ Sketch of Port Essington by Commandant John McArthur
⌂ History information board at site (photo: John Baas)
⌂ Map of 1820s–1830s historic settlements (source: Northern Territory Library) 
𝟙 there had been two prior, unsuccessful British attempts at colony made at nearby Raffles Bay and Melville Island in the 1820s
